


Outward Displays of Inner Anxieties

by virtuous_rose



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Gen, Named Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Patch 4.5: A Requiem For Heroes Spoilers, Patch 5.0: Shadowbringers Spoilers, accidental 3 am therapy sesh with the boys, blood warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:34:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23054806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virtuous_rose/pseuds/virtuous_rose
Summary: Over now long-cooled tea with her brother in a Pendants room, Alisaie explains why their friend's hair looks suspiciously shorter than it was upon the Source.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	Outward Displays of Inner Anxieties

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: Okay so right off the bat, this is VERY self-indulgent and very specific to my WoL and a very silly thing to write about, but here’s some background. Throughout most of Heavenward and all of Stormblood, I had Rose sporting long hair, but was getting bored with it and wanted something different for Shadowbringers, so I impulsively chopped it all off as short as it would go before The Ghimlyt Dark, and this was my sort-of explanation/recount of how I thought Rose would’ve gotten her haircut. (As opposed to me boringly teleporting to Gridania and calling in Mr. Aesthetician, lol) So yeah, this is a very “Hey I’ve had this personal headcanon for a while and wanted to put it into words so I remember it better” and “It’s MY WoL and I get to make up the interactions that don’t really fit into the timeline and also never happened!” So yeah I’m fucking with the timeline a bit here, but just minor things like having a night between the whole Varis chat and when the fighting starts, and having Alisaie confess her whole “Don’t leave me alone” earlier than it actually happened. 

It was night in the Crystarium, although to the two twins sitting across from each other enjoying tea and the others’ company, night was a far stretch of the word. Though they had been living upon the shard of the First for nearly a year, the eternal brightness still felt off putting. Apparently that was all meant to change, what with their old friend finally joining them, which also led to myriad opportunities for questions. 

“I’d not like to be rude and pry by asking her to her face, but Alisaie… just when did Rose do that to her hair? And why? She’s always kept it the same; I haven’t even seen her change its style since we were in Ishgard.”

His sister looked up from her nearly-cold cup of tea with an almost eager look in her eye. 

“You know, this is one of your nosy questions about her which I actually know the answer to. How lucky you are to have a sister who just so happens to be a primary source for Warrior of Light gossip.”

“Nosy que- Alisaie!”

“Hush now, dearest brother, unless you _wouldn’t_ like me to answer your burning query over our friend’s new hairstyle.”

Alphinaud quickly put an end to whatever retort he was thinking up and let Alisaie have the metaphorical floor of their Pendants table. She took a breath to prepare herself to relive the sleepless night on the Ala Mhigan border. 

“It was at Ghimlyt. It was late, the night directly after Varis’ attempt at ‘peace’ negotiations. We knew the fighting would start the moment the sun came up. Everyone needed rest, then more than ever, but she was still awake. And so was I, so I can’t fault her for refraining from sleep the night before the start of a war. 

I found myself wandering about the camp, for lack of anything better to do than sleep. But during my wandering, I heard an unexpected flurry of expletives coming from the tent of our oh-so virtuous friend.”

* * *

“Rose? Are you alright?”

Alisaie was hovering at the entrance to her friend’s temporary abode, but got no response to her question other than more cursing and stuttered breaths.

“Oh Gods. I’m coming in, okay?”

She lifted up the canvas flap of the tent and looked upon the warrior’s small quarters.

“Oh. _Rose_.”

The floor of the woman’s tent was covered in haphazardly cut strands of hair, with the culprit of the mess seated on the ground facing away, holding her hand seemingly in pain. She didn’t even so much as acknowledge her visitor’s presence, instead curling into herself in a vain attempt at hiding from possibly judging eyes. Without speaking, Alisaie walked over to the belittled warrior and snatched away her clutched hand before her friend could offer any resistance.

“You’re bleeding! And not just a little, too. Let me help you clean this up and _then_ you can tell me what possibly could have possessed you to make such a fine mess this evening.”

Rose turned her gaze further away from her uninvited guest, face and body tense from pain and a now quieted emotional outburst. She nearly grunted out a reply to the Elezen.

“I’m _fine_. Just give me a moment and I’ll be able to conjure my way back to tip-top health.”

Seemingly ignoring the injured woman’s half-hearted plea, Alisaie tore a strip from a bolt of linen cloth seated on the table in front of Rose and started winding it around the large gash in the feigned unhurt woman’s left palm. She expected there to be something, but Alisaie received no reprimand or retort, only silently wrapping up her friend’s self-inflicted wound. Instead, Rose let out a sigh and covered her forehead with her one yet undamaged hand. 

“I was saving that, you know; would make a fine dress or something. But I guess it works well enough as dressing for a stupidly produced injury.”

Alisaie tied a knot in the cloth after having sufficiently wound it around the warrior’s bloody hand. “I don’t suppose you’d care to enlighten me about the hair on the ground and the suspicious shortness of the stuff that remains on your head, not even mentioning the current state of someone’s palm.”

“Never quite got along with knives; guess that’s why I stuck to healing rather than taking up the blade. Or cooking, for that matter.” Rose moved her bandaged hand in front of her torso, rubbing it with her right. “As for this,” she paused her rubbing and pointed to her head, “It’s stupid, really, but I just felt…” 

Alisaie seated herself next to the Hyur, allowing her to pause for a moment before continuing speaking. 

“Well I guess there are multiple reasons. Everything feels so different now. I thought it felt different back in Doma, back in Ala Mhigo, back in Ishgard, hells, even back when you and I were toughing out the Coils. I guess that’s just how things are, how they’ll be forevermore: always changing. But now, the one part of my life which offered any form of continuity is gone, stolen away from consciousness by Gods-know-what. So I wanted something about _me_ to change for once. Why not lean in to the whole perpetual barrage of perpetually changing obligations?”

Rose fiddled with her newly purged hair, unevenly cut and not quite finished because of a certain accident involving the swift stroke of a Gridanian-crested knife and a moment too heated to procure scissors.

“But also, there’s another reason; one less easy to explain. Less easy for myself to even understand.”

She slouched over onto the table in front of her while breaking the already nonexistent eye contact between herself and Alisaie. With her head between her arms, Rose muttered out, “Zenos, or not-Zenos now, I… I don’t know how it correlates, but I felt as if I did _this_ whole thing,” she stopped for a moment, to breathe and try to pry her mind away from reliving their all-quite-one-sided conversations, battles, and glory-revelling. “I felt as if it would make me feel like he has less power over me; like his twisted words didn’t reach so far into my mind. Like I could better pretend that at least _some_ of what he said wasn’t true. Like I could leave those times and interactions and doubts in the past, alongside two fulms of hair, give or take.”

“Oh, Rose.” Alisaie looked up at her companion who was now on the verge of tears, unable to express the anguish and confusion she felt over a fallen and now artificially reborn enemy. She took her arm and placed it around the warrior’s side, the two leaning against each other for lack of a better way to communicate their feelings and sympathies through words. “I hate to say it, but you won’t be able to leave it all in the past. You can cut off all your hair, or buy a whole new wardrobe, or run away from all your responsibilities, but things like that… they stay with you, whether you like it or not.”

Rose turned to Alisaie, her friend’s words leaving a bitter but truthful impact. “Huh, maybe it’s just because he’s not here, but you really seem to be turning into your brother.”

A subtle bump from Alisaie’s side was all she needed to be set on a proper course of discussion and understanding instead of dodging the possibility for self-reflection and the terrifying revelations that came with it. 

“Sorry, I just… it’s hard. To think about all this. Especially when it’s the only thing you _can_ think about for these past moons, but you’ve been putting every extra onze of your energy into preventing said thoughts from gaining any traction.” 

“Rose, I don’t ask that you understand everything, either within you or outside; that simply isn’t possible for any mortal being. But try, at least, to acknowledge those thoughts; that they exist.”

Rose tightened her arms around her fellow sleep-dodger, not wanting time to move forward even a tick; she just wanted to stay there, in her cramped old tent next to the frontlines of a soon-to-be battlefield, for as long as eternity felt in the dark recesses of the night. 

“Thank you, Ali. Thank you.”

The woman looked at her companion, seemingly her first voluntary act of eye contact throughout their entire conversation.

“Now that I think about it, _that_ was the actual reason I, you know, am currently missing a few summers’ worth of hair. To try and forget the parts of said summers that I don’t want to remember.”

Alisaie gave her friend one of her own stoic nods and stood up to retrieve the plain bag she knew Eorzea’s Champion used to store weaving materials. 

“I know this decision was very spur of the moment, but let’s try to at least make you presentable, shall we?” 

She rummaged through the bag until she found a pair of steel scissors hiding in the bottom under fabric scraps and haphazardly arranged spools of thread. Alisaie took the scissors in hand and kneeled behind the disheveled-haired woman’s back, taking some of the uneven strands into her free hand.

“Ali, I know those scissors and I know they’re meant for cutting fabric and fabric only. You are aware that using them on any other material is among the gravest sins man can commit, yes?”

The Elezen charged with using her borrowed scissors for evil was taken aback at this sudden revelation.

“Well I for one am not about to wake up an entire camp just to ask around fo-”

“Good thing I’m too damned tired to care about going against the Gods’ will for the star, at least for tonight.”

Alisaie let out a small chuckle at her companion’s odd order of priorities, and went to work trying to even out the irregularly cut hair. 

“I’m afraid it’s going to have to be a little on the short end. Well, quite a bit on the short end, if you want everything to look like it belongs on the same head.”

“That’s fine; maybe this way I’ll get to grow it out all fresh, with fresh memories from now on. Not that I’d soon forget your motherly advice about not being able to get rid of some memories.”

“You have an awful lot of nerve calling me motherly while I’m holding a sharp object not even two ilms from your scalp.”

With both their remarks, the two laughed both at themselves and each other before Alisaie put down her shears and started appraising her quality fixing job.

“I’m not quite sure how I did it, but I think it’s at a point where you _should_ be able to walk into a city without being escorted to the nearest gaol for public indecency. I ought to say, you look quite dapper sporting hair shorter than that of a boy’s of five summers.”

“Two compliments, both backhanded. So maybe you aren’t turning into your brother after all.”

Rose turned around and looked at her friend and makeshift aesthetician both to offer her thanks and start saying her owed goodbyes before it was too late to sleep even a bell. Before she could say any words of gratitude for her help, Alisaie put on a straight face and looked forwards at her companion.

“Rose, once the fighting starts, just… don’t you dare leave me alone. No matter what happens, we have to survive. Together.”

For the first time that night, Rose was truly out of words. The core of her allies were trapped in death-like slumbers with seemingly no way of recovery. The body of the one enemy she knew was stronger than her was waiting on the battlefield, possessed by another enemy of even more enigmatic proportions. Not to mention the entire conflict as a whole, the myriad countries and city-states embroiled in an only bells-away war. 

She couldn’t conjure up any phrases or affirmations to sate Alisaie’s request, so she merely nodded in her friend’s direction. She sprawled out on the dusty carpet dividing the inside of the tent from the desert ground and beckoned to her late-night visitor. 

“We only have a few bells at most, so let’s spend it together. We _are_ miraculously the only two Scions left standing.”

Alisaie accepted the last-moment request and laid down next to the tent’s rightful owner. Rose tilted her head to get a view of her floor-bound companion.

“We can clean up this mess later, right? As you said, we’ll survive this. Together.”

* * *

“Looking back, it was quite naive to suggest that we stay together; what with four of the six Scions being called away, of course the last two were going to get their turns eventually. But I don’t think I would have acted any other way then, even if I could go back and alter my words. That night was not nearly filled with enough sleep for a battle, but it was the most peaceful I’d felt since you all started getting called here.”

Alisaie started clearing her place at the table while looking at her brother.

“I reckon we should learn from past experiences and not stay up until Gods-forsaken hours of the night, even if we are drinking tea and not cutting hair.”

Alphinaud offered a nod in response while starting to move his dishes to the sink of their own temporary abode. “Even if the so-called Gods-forsaken hours of the night portray no difference to the Gods-forsaken hours of the day.” 

“Still counts, not staying up too late. So don’t. Now that we are all actually together again, I’d not like to miss out on anything because of a case of oversleeping.”

Finding late-night company preferable to sleeping alone in their unfamiliar rooms, the twins quickly made for the apartment’s bed and sofa to wile away the hours of the too-bright night, not too differently from a night spent sharing a carpet covered in dust and cut hair.


End file.
